Book Review: The Swedish-American Press and the Vietnam War by Edward Burton

Book Review
57
Edward Burton. The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t h e V i e t n a m W a r .
Göteborg: Dissertation from the History Department at Göteborg
University, No. 34, 2003). 324 pp.
In 1972, angered by Swedish criticism of American policy in
Vietnam, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Swe­den,
recalling its representative in Stockholm and refusing to receive
the new Swedish ambassador in Washington. Not even America's
Cold War enemy the Soviet Union was subjected to such a drastic
move, and the two-year diplomatic "frost" that followed proved to
be an agonizing problem for the Swedish immigrant community in
the United States: how could its members reconcile loyalty to the
new homeland with love of their native country? The way the news­papers
serving that community reacted to the crisis is the topic of
The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t h e V i e t n a m W a r , a Göteborg Univer­sity
doctoral dissertation in history. Author Edward Burton's study
relates the history of America's Swedish-language press, outlines its
financial situation as the 1960s began, describes the relationship be­tween
these American papers and the Swedish government, reviews
how the press viewed the Vietnam War itself, and discusses how the
newspapers reacted to the response to the war in Sweden.
The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t h e V i e t n a m W a r is, as its back
cover claims, the first extensive survey of Swedish immigrant news­papers
to focus on the later half of the twentieth century; and Bur­ton,
an American doing his graduate work in Sweden, has done
wide-ranging and impressive research. Apart from reading virtually
every Swedish-language newspaper available from the time period of
his study to find Vietnam-related articles, he has also visited major
repositories of Swedish immigration materials in Sweden, the United
States, and Canada. In some cases, Burton has located previously
unavailable records—found, in one memorable instance, in the dank
basement of a retirement home in British Columbia—or been able to
ascertain that some materials, such as newspaper circulation records,
no longer exist. Burton's archival research is complemented by a
58
number of interviews with immigrant editors and officials of Sweden's
foreign ministry, Utrikesdepartmentet (UD), as well as by the official
correspondence of U D , declassified, in some cases, exclusively for
the benefit of Burton's project.
His examination of these sources produces a number of interest¬
ing conclusions. The American-Swedish diplomatic crisis caused by
the Vietnam War was indeed a problem for Swedish-American edi­tors,
who watched in dismay and disbelief how images of protesters
and government officials sympathetic to America's Vietnamese en­emies
began streaming out of Sweden—and were quickly noticed by
mainstream American media. The disagreement over the war was a
cause of concern from Sweden's point of view as well, as it clearly
damaged the country's standing in the United States and produced
calls for boycotting Swedish products. Trying to counteract the in­creasingly
hostile attitude in the United States toward Sweden, UD
sought to project a positive image and anxiously monitored Ameri­can
media, including Swedish-American publications, for signs of
change. In the case of the Swedish immigrant press, the ministry
more or less assumed that coverage would be positive, as U D had a
long history of providing these papers with news from Sweden. When
immigrant journalists edited this news to fit an American rather than
a Swedish point of view, however, U D officials became perturbed.
In its discussion of what the papers actually said about Sweden
and Vietnam, The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and the V i e t n a m W a r focuses
on three publications: Svenska A m e r i k a n a r e n - T r i b u n e n in Chicago,
N o r d s t j e r n a n - S v e a in New York, and Svenska Posten in Seattle. Among
the fifteen or so newspapers published in the United States and
Canada in the 1960s, these three were the ones most concerned with
news; and they also represent, in Burton's view, three different levels
of ethnic community: national, regional, and local, respectively. While
many studies of Swedish immigrant papers have described them as
uniformly conservative, Burton's study shows that such was not the
case in the Vietnam War era. While Svenska A m e r i k a n a r e n - T r i b u n en
and N o r d s t j e r n a n - S v e a were generally supportive of U.S. policy in
Vietnam, Svenska Posten was an early skeptic. The Seattle weekly,
edited by a man who labeled himself a Social Democrat in the
Scandinavian tradition, was also the most sympathetic to Sweden's
59
position. As support for the war waned in American society in gen­eral,
however, Swedish-American editors became more disillusioned
about the conflict as well.
The extensive discussion that The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t he
V i e t n a m W a r provides of a period in Swedish-American press history
that has hitherto been ignored is by itself enough of a reason to read
Burton's study, and it provides intriguing insights into the attempts of
U D to shape U.S. public opinion (both Swedish-American and "Ameri­can").
Part of that effort involved using economic incentives to achieve
that goal when dealing with the financially strapped Swedish-lan­guage
press.
The ambitious scope of the book is, however, the source of some
weaknesses, primarily because it does not always allow the author the
opportunity to discuss his findings fully. Early in the study, for in­stance,
Burton suggests that the relationship between the Swedish
immigrant editors and the land they had left had always been com­plex,
shaped forever by the act of immigration. Typically, journalists
felt affection for Sweden but were also highly critical of many aspects
of life there (although they were quick to defend their native country
when it was attacked by "non-Swedish" outsiders). What the Viet­nam
War did, in essence, was make the complex and contradictory
character of that relationship sharper than ever before; and the un­ease
that the conflict produced among Swedish-American editors
could serve as a starting point for a more general discussion of the
role that the original country of immigrants plays in shaping their
ethnic communities in America. Such a discussion would have al­lowed
the author to tie the study as a whole more firmly to the
theory of community newspapers that surfaces in the beginning of
The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and the V i e t n a m W a r .
Similarly, the author's recurring point that U D furnished Swed­ish-
American newspapers with material written from a Swedish point
of view does not sufficiently place the news supplied by the Foreign
Ministry into the larger context of the newspapers' use of and need
for such news throughout their existence. Before the Swedish govern­ment
entered the picture and established an organized way of trans­mitting
news about Sweden to America, editors had secured it by
copying from Swedish papers. In both instances, the material that the
60
Swedish-American press used had a Swedish slant, although the UD
system was certainly more purposeful and had certain outcomes in
mind.
While some of the discussion in The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and
the V i e t n a m W a r thus deserves to be expanded, other sections loom
unnecessarily large. A n entire chapter is devoted to the way the
Swedish-American press viewed the war itself, and while that view
certainly had a bearing on editors' reactions to events in Sweden, it
does not quite seem to warrant such an extensive discussion. Even
less necessary, perhaps, is the next-to-last chapter, a quantitative
content analysis of the three papers that Burton focuses on. The
analysis does not add substantially to what Burton has already noted
in previous chapters, as it shows, once again, that Svenska Posten was
against the war and sympathetic to Swedish criticism of it and that
the other two papers were not.
These are rather minor points, however, and the interesting topic
of The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and the V i e t n a m W a r and the impressive
research that is the foundation of Burton's study make it a valuable
contribution to the history of Swedish newspapers in America.
ULF JONAS BJÖRK
INDIANA UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS

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Book Review
57
Edward Burton. The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t h e V i e t n a m W a r .
Göteborg: Dissertation from the History Department at Göteborg
University, No. 34, 2003). 324 pp.
In 1972, angered by Swedish criticism of American policy in
Vietnam, the United States broke off diplomatic relations with Swe­den,
recalling its representative in Stockholm and refusing to receive
the new Swedish ambassador in Washington. Not even America's
Cold War enemy the Soviet Union was subjected to such a drastic
move, and the two-year diplomatic "frost" that followed proved to
be an agonizing problem for the Swedish immigrant community in
the United States: how could its members reconcile loyalty to the
new homeland with love of their native country? The way the news­papers
serving that community reacted to the crisis is the topic of
The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t h e V i e t n a m W a r , a Göteborg Univer­sity
doctoral dissertation in history. Author Edward Burton's study
relates the history of America's Swedish-language press, outlines its
financial situation as the 1960s began, describes the relationship be­tween
these American papers and the Swedish government, reviews
how the press viewed the Vietnam War itself, and discusses how the
newspapers reacted to the response to the war in Sweden.
The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t h e V i e t n a m W a r is, as its back
cover claims, the first extensive survey of Swedish immigrant news­papers
to focus on the later half of the twentieth century; and Bur­ton,
an American doing his graduate work in Sweden, has done
wide-ranging and impressive research. Apart from reading virtually
every Swedish-language newspaper available from the time period of
his study to find Vietnam-related articles, he has also visited major
repositories of Swedish immigration materials in Sweden, the United
States, and Canada. In some cases, Burton has located previously
unavailable records—found, in one memorable instance, in the dank
basement of a retirement home in British Columbia—or been able to
ascertain that some materials, such as newspaper circulation records,
no longer exist. Burton's archival research is complemented by a
58
number of interviews with immigrant editors and officials of Sweden's
foreign ministry, Utrikesdepartmentet (UD), as well as by the official
correspondence of U D , declassified, in some cases, exclusively for
the benefit of Burton's project.
His examination of these sources produces a number of interest¬
ing conclusions. The American-Swedish diplomatic crisis caused by
the Vietnam War was indeed a problem for Swedish-American edi­tors,
who watched in dismay and disbelief how images of protesters
and government officials sympathetic to America's Vietnamese en­emies
began streaming out of Sweden—and were quickly noticed by
mainstream American media. The disagreement over the war was a
cause of concern from Sweden's point of view as well, as it clearly
damaged the country's standing in the United States and produced
calls for boycotting Swedish products. Trying to counteract the in­creasingly
hostile attitude in the United States toward Sweden, UD
sought to project a positive image and anxiously monitored Ameri­can
media, including Swedish-American publications, for signs of
change. In the case of the Swedish immigrant press, the ministry
more or less assumed that coverage would be positive, as U D had a
long history of providing these papers with news from Sweden. When
immigrant journalists edited this news to fit an American rather than
a Swedish point of view, however, U D officials became perturbed.
In its discussion of what the papers actually said about Sweden
and Vietnam, The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and the V i e t n a m W a r focuses
on three publications: Svenska A m e r i k a n a r e n - T r i b u n e n in Chicago,
N o r d s t j e r n a n - S v e a in New York, and Svenska Posten in Seattle. Among
the fifteen or so newspapers published in the United States and
Canada in the 1960s, these three were the ones most concerned with
news; and they also represent, in Burton's view, three different levels
of ethnic community: national, regional, and local, respectively. While
many studies of Swedish immigrant papers have described them as
uniformly conservative, Burton's study shows that such was not the
case in the Vietnam War era. While Svenska A m e r i k a n a r e n - T r i b u n en
and N o r d s t j e r n a n - S v e a were generally supportive of U.S. policy in
Vietnam, Svenska Posten was an early skeptic. The Seattle weekly,
edited by a man who labeled himself a Social Democrat in the
Scandinavian tradition, was also the most sympathetic to Sweden's
59
position. As support for the war waned in American society in gen­eral,
however, Swedish-American editors became more disillusioned
about the conflict as well.
The extensive discussion that The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and t he
V i e t n a m W a r provides of a period in Swedish-American press history
that has hitherto been ignored is by itself enough of a reason to read
Burton's study, and it provides intriguing insights into the attempts of
U D to shape U.S. public opinion (both Swedish-American and "Ameri­can").
Part of that effort involved using economic incentives to achieve
that goal when dealing with the financially strapped Swedish-lan­guage
press.
The ambitious scope of the book is, however, the source of some
weaknesses, primarily because it does not always allow the author the
opportunity to discuss his findings fully. Early in the study, for in­stance,
Burton suggests that the relationship between the Swedish
immigrant editors and the land they had left had always been com­plex,
shaped forever by the act of immigration. Typically, journalists
felt affection for Sweden but were also highly critical of many aspects
of life there (although they were quick to defend their native country
when it was attacked by "non-Swedish" outsiders). What the Viet­nam
War did, in essence, was make the complex and contradictory
character of that relationship sharper than ever before; and the un­ease
that the conflict produced among Swedish-American editors
could serve as a starting point for a more general discussion of the
role that the original country of immigrants plays in shaping their
ethnic communities in America. Such a discussion would have al­lowed
the author to tie the study as a whole more firmly to the
theory of community newspapers that surfaces in the beginning of
The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and the V i e t n a m W a r .
Similarly, the author's recurring point that U D furnished Swed­ish-
American newspapers with material written from a Swedish point
of view does not sufficiently place the news supplied by the Foreign
Ministry into the larger context of the newspapers' use of and need
for such news throughout their existence. Before the Swedish govern­ment
entered the picture and established an organized way of trans­mitting
news about Sweden to America, editors had secured it by
copying from Swedish papers. In both instances, the material that the
60
Swedish-American press used had a Swedish slant, although the UD
system was certainly more purposeful and had certain outcomes in
mind.
While some of the discussion in The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and
the V i e t n a m W a r thus deserves to be expanded, other sections loom
unnecessarily large. A n entire chapter is devoted to the way the
Swedish-American press viewed the war itself, and while that view
certainly had a bearing on editors' reactions to events in Sweden, it
does not quite seem to warrant such an extensive discussion. Even
less necessary, perhaps, is the next-to-last chapter, a quantitative
content analysis of the three papers that Burton focuses on. The
analysis does not add substantially to what Burton has already noted
in previous chapters, as it shows, once again, that Svenska Posten was
against the war and sympathetic to Swedish criticism of it and that
the other two papers were not.
These are rather minor points, however, and the interesting topic
of The S w e d i s h - A m e r i c a n Press and the V i e t n a m W a r and the impressive
research that is the foundation of Burton's study make it a valuable
contribution to the history of Swedish newspapers in America.
ULF JONAS BJÖRK
INDIANA UNIVERSITY INDIANAPOLIS